Collection des Desseins des Figures Colossales & des Groupes qui Ont Été Faits de Neige

Antwerp: J. B. Carstiaenssens [and] M. Bruers, 1773. First and only edition of this strange and wonderful production. During the harsh winter of 1772, the artists and art students of Antwerp constructed a series of colossal snow sculptures in the frozen streets and courtyards of the city, each more elaborate than the next, some reaching as high as twenty feet. The subjects were mostly classical - Venus, Hercules, Andromeda - with the occasional nod to local figures and subjects. To memorialize these ephemeral works of public art, the Comte de Robiano commissioned a series of twenty-four plates, with accompanying text by the Antwerp canon Antoon de Vries, recording the subject, dimensions, location, and group of artists responsible for each sculpture. Given the limitations of snow as a medium, the plates represent the ideal form of each work: the text notes the artists' struggle to contain the damage caused by wind and thaw, and their inability to realize some of their more ambitious decorative elements. The work is dedicated to Charles de Lorraine, Governor of the Austrian Netherlands and a patron of the Royal Academy, where many of the artists were students: his portrait is featured on the snow monument depicted on plate 15. Text in French. A fine copy, never bound, of the only record of these long-melted colossi, a testament to printing as "the art preservative of all arts.". Octavo, measuring 8.5 x 6 inches: [16]. Text in sheets, decorative woodcut borders around title and text pages, woodcut tailpiece. Twenty-four numbered engraved plates, loose as issued.